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“Hillary’s State Department Refused to Brand Boko Haram as Terrorists”

The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls.

In the past week, Clinton, who made protecting women and girls a key pillar of her tenure at the State Department, has been a vocal advocate for the 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the loosely organized group of militants terrorizing northern Nigeria. Her May 4 tweet about the girls, using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, was cited across the media and widely credited for raising awareness of their plight.

[…]

On Wednesday, Clinton said that the abduction of the girls by Boko Haram was “abominable, it’s criminal, it’s an act of terrorism and it really merits the fullest response possible, first and foremost from the government of Nigeria.” Clinton said that as Secretary of State she had numerous meetings with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and had urged the Nigerian government to do more on counterterrorism.

What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

In May 2012, then-Justice Department official Lisa Monaco (now at the White House) wrote to the State Department to urge Clinton to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. The following month, Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, said that Boko Haram “are likely sharing funds, training, and explosive materials” with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And yet, Hillary Clinton’s State Department still declined to place Boko Haram on its official terrorist roster.

And why might that be, do you think?

Here, let me venture a guess: neither the President nor Hillary Clinton, each mindful of his or her legacy, and each willing to take calculated risks in order to preserve certain perceptions, could not allow that additional Muslim terrorist groups were popping up at a time the President was telling the American people “al Qaeda is decimated,” and Clinton was being praised for her incomparable foreign policy skills — this itself being a perception the media was helping to cultivate and preserve.

The goal was to get Obama through the 2012 elections. And it worked — in large part because the media and Hillary Clinton were complicit in any number of scandal cover-ups.

Being placed on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations allows U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to use certain tools and authorities, including several found in the Patriot Act. The designation makes it illegal for any U.S. entities to do business with the group in question. It cuts off access to the U.S. financial system for the organization and anyone associating with it. And the designation also serves to stigmatize and isolate foreign organizations by encouraging other nations to take similar measures.

The State Department’s refusal to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization prevented U.S. law enforcement agencies from fully addressing the growing Boko Haram threat in those crucial two years, multiple GOP lawmakers told The Daily Beast.

“For years, Boko Haram has terrorized Nigeria and Western interests in the region with few consequences,” Sen. James Risch told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “The U.S. government should have moved more quickly to list them as a terrorist organization and brought U.S. resources to track and disrupt their activities. The failure to act swiftly has had consequences.”

Risch and seven other GOP senators introduced legislation in early 2013 that would have forced Clinton to designate the group or explain why she thought it was a bad idea. The State Department lobbied against the legislation at the time, according to internal State Department emails obtained by The Daily Beast.

In the House, leading intelligence-minded lawmakers wrote letter after letter to Clinton urging her to designate Boko Haram as terrorists. The effort in the House was led by then-Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King and Patrick Meehan, chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

Meehan and his Democratic counterpart Jackie Speier put out a lengthy report in 2011 laying out the evidentiary basis for naming Boko Haram a terrorist organization, including the group’s ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and to Somalia’s al-Shabab terrorist organization.

In an interview Wednesday, Meehan told The Daily Beast that if Clinton had placed Boko Haram on the terrorism list in 2011, U.S. law enforcement agencies now being deployed to Nigeria to help search for the girls might have been in a better position.

[…]

[…] Meehan and others believe that the Clinton State Department underestimated the pace of Boko Haram’s growth and the group’s intention to plan operations that could harm U.S. critical interests abroad.

“At the time, the sentiment that was expressed by the administration was this was a local grievance and therefore not a threat to the United States or its interests,” he said. “They were saying al Qaeda was on the run and our argument was contrary to that. It has metastasized and it is actually in many ways a growing threat and this is a stark example of that.”

[my emphasis]

Unlike Meehan, I don’t for a second believe the Clinton State Department, having been lobbied so heavily to designate Boko Haram a terrorist group, “underestimated the pace of Boko Haram’s growth and the group’s intention to plan operations that could harm U.S. critical interests abroad” — nor do I believe they thought the organization represented “a local grievance and therefore not a threat to the United States or its interests.” Instead, I believe they wanted to push any evidence of growing Islamic terrorism out of view, at least until after the election. When Benghazi blew up in their faces, they went to work covering that up. And in so doing, neglected to go back and cover their asses with respect to Boko Haram — something Clinton attempted by coming out of the box quickly with her condemnations and her Tweets, the hope being that the mainstream progressive press would give her the same kind of cover by omission that it’s always given Obama.

And she may be right.

My play? Would be to drag her before Congress again and let her play yet another shrieking “what difference does it make?” refrain.

Because this is who she is.

And if we don’t start making it clear, the same duping of the American people that took place when Obama was painted as a pragmatic, educated moderate (albeit the kind who palled around with Khalidi, Ayers, Said, Dohrne, and Jeremy Wright — after having been suckled on the teat of communist propaganda and trained in the tactics of Alinsky and the social justice ruses of Cloward-Piven) is going to repeat itself. After all, how “objective” do you think “newsies” like George Snuffleuffagus or Chelsie Clinton are going to be in the run-up to the next Bush v Clinton election?

At which point, after the conservative base refuses to turn out for Jeb and Hillary is elected, even with Boehner and McConnell as leaders in each chamber of Congress, the imperial Executive — as Obama has expanded it — will continue apace. And we’ll all be toast. By design.

Comments (23)

Not to give credence to mere rumors and speculation, but what if the former Hillary aide and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Huma Abedin umm… influenced Hillary during a … umm… private (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) meeting? IYKWIMAITYD

What was it that nasty Coptic filmmaker who Hillary condemned was complaining about regarding Islamic treatment of Christian women and girls? Surely something different from what these Nigerian Islamists do with women and girls, right?

“Boko Haram” aka “Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad” aka “Western education is sinful,” you don’t hear those names used too much as they give away the game, are not just kidnapping girls. They are kidnapping mostly Christian girls and selling them into slavery, proudly.

On Monday, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau admitted that his group is responsible for the kidnapping of over 200 girls from Chibok, Borno State last month, and said that he plans to have them sold on the market.

“I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah,” Shekau, said in the video translated by CNN.

“There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women.”

They are continuing to kidnap more girls and also just this week have attacked two villages and killed over 450 people. The villages were selected because they were opposing the efforts of Boko Haram.

Nigeria is not the only country that Boko Haram terrorizes, Cameroon too is being hit. And surprise, surprise, both these countries are now having outbreaks of polio due to children not being vaccinated. Funny that no one notices that where radical Islamists take charge, diseases follow.

Not only is Hillary Tweeting #BringBackOurGirls but Michelle Obama has also. This is just so sweet since the only reason that Boko Haram has the power now to expand its operations and do the kidnappings and murders of hundreds at a time is that the toppling of Gaddafi which opened up his arms stashes to terrorist groups. And that ties what Boko Haram is doing in with the Benghazi attack and the questions of what was the Ambassador and the CIA’s Annex doing? And what did that attack make possible for terrorists?

“The Nigerians have shown a reluctance to accept not only our assistance but also a reluctance to accept some of our analytic advice,” said Johnnie Carson, who was assistant secretary of state for Africa until last year. “It is important that the Nigerians accept this.”

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. ambassador in Abuja, James F. Entwistle, met Wednesday with Nigeria’s national security adviser to start making a formal assessment of the capabilities Washington could bring to bear.

“Obviously, this is in the interests of the Nigerian government to accept every aspect of our assistance,” Psaki said. “They conveyed that they were willing to do that yesterday and it continues to be in their interest to be as cooperative as possible.”

Carson said the United States could share satellite data to help track the movements of the fighters, which would mirror assistance it has contributed to the international hunt for elusive rebel leader Joseph Kony in eastern Africa.

The Obama administration has been critical of the military approach of the Jonathan government, which is dominated by Christians from the country’s south, in dealing with the insurrection in the predominantly Muslim north.

Washington has advocated a wider economic and social-justice agenda to counter the dogmatic Islamists and increase national loyalty among disaffected northern Nigerians. Jonathan has mostly ignored the advice, Carson and others said.

“There has always been a security response to these problems, and that security response generally has been very, very heavy-handed — brutal in many instances,” Carson said, which has led many Nigerians to regard the military as a threat nearly on par with the militants.

Insurrection? How about jihad or genocide. Here’s a description of their 3/14/2014 video:

The sect sang that their demand for Sharia cannot be compromised. They restated that their targets remained churches, Christians and the Nigerian state. Part of the song stated, “We are working for Allah and must bring Shariah to existence; we are committed to protecting Muslims from being annihilated by infidels. We are going to kill them. We will enter Churches and slaughter Christians and barracks. We are calling on all Muslims to come out and fight Jihad. If you joke, these infidels will annihilate Muslims. You see how they are killing our women and children.”

The group boasted that it had demonstrated its prowess in Borno, Bauchi and Abuja, and the infidels of Plateau, Kaduna, Adamawa and Gombe.

They vowed to fight for Shariah will all their might until success was achieved.

By late last year it seemed the militants had been chased out of city centers and were losing the ability to carry out large-scale attacks, but Boko Haram have repeatedly proved masters of recovering from apparent defeat.

A coordinated strike by some 200 Boko Haram fighters on an army barracks, police station and prison in the town of Bama last week that left 55 people dead and freed more than 100 prisoners was the latest evidence that they have recovered their strength.
[…]
The Bama attack showed their substantial firepower, including machine guns, large numbers of rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns, a sign the weapons flood from the Libyan war that helped rebels seize parts of Mali last year has reached Nigeria, officials say.

By that Matthews must mean that Obama is going to be driven from office and replaced by an idiot who can’t piss and chew gum at the same time who will then go on to lose an even bigger idiot whose smarmy faux populism ill conceals his elitist contempt for the people he claims to champion, thereby paving the way for a (liberal) political revolution lead by a genuinely charismatic leader of vision and underapreciated depth.

Anybody know if Bill O’Reilly’s interested in being President helping Matthews get 2 out of 3?

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